Still Tricklin' After All These Years -OR- Velocitized For Their Convenience

"We would need $60 MILLION to make the necessary improvements to our sewers. This village will never have $60 million to spend on sewers."
Yada yada yada...
We need federal dollars. We need state dollars.

I tell ya, this shit is Mel Brooks funny. In Illinois, Crook County, Proviso Township it's been a stooge-a-palooza since the first floods hit in June. Neglected infrastructure coupled with the uncoupled high-density inbuilding that has marked the last 25 years along with the campaign funds that dovetailed from the developers had NOTHING to do with it. This being an election year (when isn't it) there's been no shortage of hand-wringers, commiseration and faith-healers to tour the damage.
But in our case, there's no BP to mitigate the damage and restore the foundations.

The arguments against allowing the developments in the first place are all proving true. The developers are long gone; moved on to greener pastures, retirement and the good life. The fifty pounds of shit they crammed into their ten pound bags are somebody else's troubles now. It's of little comfort that most of the scammers giants are in bankruptcy court over the last debacle in their chain. Their LLCs formed and dissolved with each project, so legally, they are only on the hook for their most recent misdeeds.

But for community after community the stain and stench literally permeates the towns. I'm told my reactions are sour grapes because I didn't cash-in by cashing out at the height of the boom. That my aversion to "progress" is a general character flaw of my hippie leanings. And that somehow the fact that the same plagues have visited communities across the spectrum where these scams were perpetrated shows that there is nobody to blame for any of it.

So yeah, I'm saying "I told you so.", but I'm certainly not enjoying it. There is no joy when the community you joined, raised children in and where you planned to remain goes through all this needless bullshit because of short-sighted sociopaths.

If there is a silver lining it comes from our town being small enough to FIX. That instead of paying lawyers to find new and clever ways to allow misguided planning and zoning finagles, we can instead use the tax dollars for their intended purpose and wind up saving money AND the town in the long-run. Other places can continue to play the game the old "spend your way to prosperity" ways, but we don't have to anymore. We have the scars to prove it's not a sane approach.

Sitting on the terminus of two "EL" lines, spitting distance to two Metra-rail lines,
with a bisecting interstate highway and wizened-up citizens oinking from the boinkin', there will be a tomorrow here. With any luck and much hard work it'll be a bright tomorrow.

I have my homestead and a whole bunch of great neighbors. That should trump the pissants and glory-holers. If not, I am a hippie, but I am NOT a pacifist.